Update allows ChatGPT to ‘see, hear and speak’

Bengaluru — OpenAI’s ChatGPT is getting an update that will enable the viral chatbot to have voice conversations with users and interact using images, moving it closer to popular artificial intelligence (AI) assistants such as Apple’s Siri.

The voice feature “opens doors to many creative and accessibility-focused applications”, OpenAI says in a blog post.

Similar AI services such as Siri, Google voice assistant and Amazon.com’s Alexa are integrated with the devices they run on and are often used to set alarms and reminders, and deliver information off the internet.

Since its debut in 2022, ChatGPT has been adopted by companies for a wide range of tasks from summarising documents to writing computer code, setting off a race among Big Tech companies to launch their own offerings based on generative AI.

ChatGPT’s new voice feature can also narrate bedtime stories, settle debates at the dinner table, and speak out loud text input from users.

The technology behind it is being used by Spotify for the platform’s podcasters to translate their content in different languages, OpenAI says.

With images support, users can take pictures of things around them and ask the chatbot to “troubleshoot why your grill won’t start, explore the contents of your fridge to plan a meal, or analyse a complex graph for work-related data”.

Alphabet’s Google Lens is the popular choice to gain information on images.

The new ChatGPT features will be released for subscribers of its Plus and Enterprise plans over the next two weeks.

Reuters